Interview with Filip Reyntjens
As of January 2016, Filip Reyntjens will become
Emeritus Professor at the Institute. Professor
Reyntjens’s career spans over forty years with,
amongst others, roles of academic, development
and human rights practitioner, educator, activist,
media commentator, Africa watcher and Chair
of IOB. One will have to wait for his biography
to learn more about his activities as well as the
details. In the meantime, X2C gathered a few
insights from his past on themes of contemporary
relevance and inquired about his plans for the
future.
X2C: You are about to leave the Institute that
you helped create. Can you remind us of how
IOB came into existence?
Let me first say that I am extremely happy to have
worked at IOB since it started in 2001. Indeed, I
am one of the people, together with in particular
Stefaan Marysse, who have worked hard to
found IOB. I am sort of a merger person. You
need critical mass to achieve things. At several
moments in the past I have tried to bring together
scattered expertise. Some attempts failed but
IOB is a real success story. Until the early 2000s,
the University of Antwerp was made up of three
separate institutions. We were concerned about
the fragmentation of development studies. But
there was a lot of resistance to the idea of merging
because, generally speaking, people are afraid
of change. People felt more comfortable in their
small institutes and were not sure what their role
would be in a larger one. Mergers are difficult to
manage but IOB’s went smoothly. We developed a
common identity within six months. People were
brought together and we developed a ‘we-feeling’.
What we have achieved with IOB is that we
moved away from minor players that would not
have been relevant in the European landscape of
development studies.
X2C: Based on where IOB is now, how do you
see its future?
Well, I can